Customer Reviews

Tenacious

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4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
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"Tenacious" is the sixth, and best so far, book in Julian Stockwin's "Kydd" series. These books are set in the Napoleonic-era Royal Navy and follow in the same vein as C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin books.

In "Tenacious," Lieutenant Kydd is posted aboard the 64-gun Tenacious. Kydd sees action at the Battle of the Nile (where he meets Horatio Nelson and is inspired in his career by that great leader), the retaking of Minorca, and the Siege of Acre. Kydd, who began his career as a pressed seaman, is now a confident leader and officer in the Royal Navy - and more importantly, an inspired fighter.

Although this genre was obviously inspired by C.S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian, the Kydd novels remind me more of Bernard Cornwell's "Sharpe" series of books. Richard Sharpe started as a private in the British Army and ended up an officer, just as Kydd started as a pressed seaman and eventually walked the quarterdeck as an officer. But more than that, Kydd's adventures, and Stockwin's use of some dramatic license to involve Kydd in almost every major military engagement of the time (whether at land or at sea), are more in the style of the Sharpe books than the older Hornblower or Aubrey-Maturin books.

Stockwin can tell great sea tales about Thomas Kydd, and this book is a must-read for anyone who enjoys military historical fiction or the Napoleonic era.

The earlier Kydd sagas took a bit of fortitude to get through. Clearly, Stockwyn was so invested on seamanship, he did not seem as committed to spinng a page turning yarn. However, as time has gone on, Stockwyn and his hero, Kydd have improved. In this most recent novel, Stockwyn takes us into the presence of Lord Horatio Nelson, through the eyes of Thomas Kydd. It is a fascinating and compelling experience. The story is well told and of course endowed with the qualities of seamanship and historical perspective, which have made Julian Stockwyn a real master of this genre.

One feels the surge of rising along with Kydd, through the clumsy early novels, much like Kydd's clumsy growth before the mast. Now that he has become an officer, there is a greater sophistication to the plots and storylines, which truly make the reader feel the saga as a matter of personal experience.

Bravo Julian Stockwyn for germinating, tending and growing the fascinating, engaging Thomas Kydd!

It's 1798 and Thomas Paine Kydd, a wigmaker pressed into the Royal Navy only five years before and now junior lieutenant of an aging but still serviceable sixty-four, returns with his ship from Nova Scotia on the news that Gen. Buonaparte is readying an invasion of Britain. Of immediate concern, though, is the probable actions of the French fleet at Toulon. Britain was evicted from the Mediterranean awhile back and the French, with full freedom of movement now, could head east for the Levant or Constantinople (which would open up access to India), or west, to round Gibraltar, pick up the Spanish fleet at Cadiz and the rest of the French ships at Brest, where they would be well placed to act as backup in the invasion. Tom continues learning to be an effective officer, ordering and leading his division of the crew and looking after a promising young midshipman, and looking for opportunities to be noticed. Because he has discovered ambition and is set now on attaining his own command. But in many ways, the focus of this sixth volume in the series is Horatio, Lord Nelson, a junior admiral with a skyrocketing reputation and now detached to the Med in his first independent fleet command. The author does an excellent job of detailing the long chase from Toulon to Egypt to Malta to Sicily and back again to Alexandria as Nelson's small fleet searches for the elusive French. The culmination, of course, is the Battle of the Nile, where Buonaparte navy is not just defeated by the British but nearly annihilated, leaving the general and his army stranded in the desert. Everyone has heard of Nelson at Trafalgar but Stockwin is correct in regarding the Nile as the greater and far more influential victory, and his depiction of the action is extremely good -- especially the enormous explosion of L'ORIENT. The latter part of the story sees Kydd seconded ashore at Acre, where he becomes right-hand man to Sir Sydney Smith in the delaying siege that caused Buonaparte to abandon his army and sent him scurrying back to Paris. And Tom's close friend, Renzi, who is far more than he seems to most other people, is called back to the family estate in England, where he finally resolves his own dilemma. In a way, the series is falling more and more into line with previous Napoleonic-era naval series, now that Kydd is a quarterdeck officer, but the author -- whose grasp of his subject and the period has never been less than first-rate -- also seems to have hit his stride as a storyteller. This is perhaps the best in the series so far.

The story of the battle at the Nile and Acre was refreshing. Kydd adventures usally please. This book seemed to have more action than the last one, in which I had trouble in reading. Glad the author has pick the action. I now look forward to reading further novels by the author.

Julian Stockwin, a retired naval commander, has taken on a herculean task: competing with Patrick O'Brian, who many feel has written the best historical novels ever. And to engage O'Brian broadside to broadside, in his own sea ... why it's madness. But Stockwin has at least varied his approach -- he's not going "right at 'em," as Nelson declared. Stockwin has taken seriously the approach through the hawse hole. His hero, Kydd, is resolutely a man of the people. He has even been involved in the great mutiny at Nore, on the sailor's side! Somehow Stockwin brought him out of that safely, just as he has from various more predictable engagements at sea.

In "Tenacious," Stockwin boldly recreates the Battle of the Nile, a battle which O'Brian's Jack Aubrey often recollects for us, but which we as readers have never had dramatically presented. Here the battle is marvelously presented, with all its horror, all its pathos, and all its exhausting but exhilarating glory. Thank you, Julian Stockwin, for remedying this lack.

On the one hand, it must be admitted that Stockwin has learned a lot from O'Brian, has clearly emulated him with his hero: like Aubrey bluff, hearty, not very brilliant but devilishly shrewd as a seaman and a fighting commander (working class origins notwithstanding). And he has supplied him with a much more intellectual companion in Nicholas Renzi -- not Stockwin's best effort, however, since Renzi is at once too like Maturin and no comparison in depth of characterization and, frankly, interest. It must also be observed that Stockwin, even after eight books (through The Admiral's Daughter) has yet to really find the magic in the buddy story that O'Brian brilliantly supplied. The problem is probably Kydd, who sometimes seems fairly uninspired, although he does have his moments. And the relationship with Renzi is not exactly electric, nor yet rich and engrossing.

Still, Stockwin is a terrific researcher and he has not O'Brian's squeamishness about approaching larger than life historical figures, such as Nelson and Buonaparte. That's very gratifying. Why, indeed, should not Kydd in his peripatetic adventures find occasion to confront these semi-legendary personages and even exchange words, or be acquainted with them on some level? O'Brian should have paid more attention to one of his literary heroes, Tolstoy, who had no fear of the famous: his Napoleon could stop and chat with an ordinary soldier. And Stockwin rightly does the same.

Beyond that, we no longer have O'Brian. If one has read and re-read (many times!) the Aubrey-Maturin novels and regretted that they've become too familiar, take heart! Stockwin is worthy. Long may he prosper and write. And may his Kydd, his Renzi, get better and better, more and more accomplished.

Outstanding. Stockwin's discription of the Battle of the Nile is first rate. I always wondered why The British captains took a chance by sailing between the anchored French Line of Battle and the shore. Surely the risk of grounding was extremely high. Stockwin explains that the British took note of the way the French were moored, which allowed for their ships to swing at their moorings. Thus giving away the depth of water between ship and shore. Wonderfully discriptive of the recapture of The Island Of Minorca. The mysterious Renzi is revealed to be a much more complex character, and Kydd's standing continues to rise, as does Stockwin. To paraphase Nelson,

"No writer can do very wrong if he places his pen alongside a great yarn"

The year is 1798. HMS Tenacious has been sent from Halifax to join St. Vincent's fleet off Cadiz. They are detached to sail with Admiral Nelson into the Med and find the French fleet. They serve at the Battle of the Nile (Aboukir Bay), then at the retaking of Minorca, the evacuation of Naples, and finally at the defense of Acre against Napoleon's Army (see "Savage Siege" by Adam Hardy).

The novel has good descriptions of blazing action, interspersed with social events on shore which I found a little tedious. One hoped that Kydd would become involved with a woman or two, but that does not seem to happen (unlike Lieutenant Fox of the Adam Hardy series, who at one point found himself with a Turkish harem). I think perhaps the author tried to cover too many actions in the same novel. While descriptions of naval action are well written and interesting, it might have been spiced up with a little more detail. He does not mention, for example, the women aboard English ships at the Nile (see "John Nicol Mariner" for a first hand account) some of whom carried powder to the guns. He does not seem to go into the relationship betweem Nelson and Lady Hamilton, or incidents like Nelson hanging an officer from Naples, said to have been done at the instigation of Lady Hamilton (see James Fennimore Cooper's "Wing-and-wing").

I might add that the poem, "The boy stood on the burning deck...," was about the burning of the French flagship at the Battle of the Nile. It might also be noted that the French still had active ships after the battle, and the English 4th rate Leander was captured by the French ship Genereux 3 days after the battle while in route to Gibraltar carrying news of the battle.

Another in the series of adventures of Kydd, an impressed sailore who rises to command. Fun to read.

Stockwin hits another into the stands with his latest in the saga of Thomas Kydd's Royal Navy career at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Plausible, very readable and addictive. Keep them coming Mr. Stockwin.